"Big Bully" begins as an evocative, amusing look back at the "Wonder Years" of boyhood, and it's probably no coincidence that director Steve Miner cut his teeth on the pilot of that popular television series.
But it isn't long before "Big Bully" deteriorates into a bad "Saturday Night Live" skit (now, if that isn't redundant), stretched to feature length.Rick Moranis stars as David Leary, and he narrates the first portion of the film, which is set in a small Minnesota town. There, young David is terrorized by the school bully, Roscoe Bigger, whose nickname is "Fang."
Roscoe bullies David for years, until David's family plans a move to Oakland, Calif. Instead of being upset, as his parents expect, David is ecstatic about the impending move - and before he leaves, he takes the opportunity to tell the school principal (Don Knotts) about something Roscoe has done.
This first quarter or so of "Big Bully" offers an interesting setup, but as the action shifts to the present day, it rapidly runs downhill.
Now the adult David (Moranis) is a big-time author, and he is asked by his old middle school in Minnesota to return and teach a creative-writing class for one semester. "You're the town hero," the letter tells him.
David is a single father with a troubled son, so he takes the position, in the hope that the small-town environment where he grew up might do his son some good.
Upon his arrival in Minnesota, David immediately charms his young class with a lively, humorous approach to creative writing, and he also rekindles a relationship with his childhood crush (Julianne Phillips), now the sex-education teacher.
But his son builds a reputation as the school bully, and his main target is the son of the mild-mannered shop teacher, one Roscoe Biggers (Tom Arnold).
Mild-mannered? That's right. It seems that David's tattling all those years ago sent Roscoe to reform school, and he is now a broken man. With David's return, however, Roscoe becomes aggressive again, terrorizing David with all kinds of practical jokes, ranging from flattening his car's tires to shooting at him with a nail gun.
While you or I might consider bringing the police into this kind of confrontational, threatening behavior, David just runs - thus re-creating their old school-days' bully-victim relationship.
As a result, the film sinks to a silly, childish level as the pranks escalate to ridiculous heights.
In the second half of the film, director Miner is probably striving for the kind of aggressive destruction comedy that Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy did so well. But working with a screenplay by Mark Steven Johnson (the "Grumpy Old Men" films), he hasn't a clue how to stage any of the comically violent set-pieces.
Miner and Johnson also never quite settle on a tone - is this supposed to be the off-the-wall style of "Naked Gun," or gentle, sentimental humor or slapstick or satire? They try them all, which results in a real mishmash.
Much of the film is filled with nasty, mean-spirited gags, which might be on-target satire if aimed at adults, but in a kids' picture seem merely inappropriate.
And the final scenes begin to look like a dark take on "Cape Fear," as the film gets progressively more violent. Ultimately, we see David and Roscoe atop a log that straddles the sides of a waterfall in a rainstorm in the middle of the night as Roscoe intones: "Welcome to hell." This is a children's comedy?
The players are adequate, though bringing Don Knotts into the mix and then giving him nothing to do seems a real crime. And the same goes for Carol Kane, as Roscoe's nagging wife.
"Big Bully" is rated PG for violence, profanity and vulgarity.